For her birthday I built my daughter a lil coop and bought her a couple chickens to care for. They're cool lil animals for the backyard, and fairly low maintenance. But, now, they're producing eggs and its gnarling me out.

Knowing where your food comes from usually isn't pretty. Seeing what is making your eggs and seeing where they're coming from probably isn't appetizing. Fancy, hermetically sealed bags with the final product is a lot easier to digest. Pun intended.

My wife's family raises their own chicken and cattle, so we always get the good stuff for free. Check out this pic of an egg one of the chickens laid last year - the smaller one is about a normal sized egg. The other... well we're pretty sure the chicken was traumatized after that delivery.

Eggs seem like a commercial product, like Tang or Spam, until the day you see one fall out a chicken.

I've never been able to get down with the brown eggs. They don't feel clinical enough. When I was a kid, we had some Banty chickens that would lay these small greenish eggs. Those felt wrong too, like the Audobon Society was going to arrest me for aborting baby Robins.

RolandDeschain wrote:TriCHawk - ever try making 50 or so deviled eggs with fresh eggs, though? It takes literally like twice as long compared to store-bought eggs that have been in your fridge for a couple of weeks.

There's a membrane that keeps the shell attached to the yolk after its boiled that needs time to release. try cooking them a few days ahead of time

RolandDeschain wrote:TriCHawk - ever try making 50 or so deviled eggs with fresh eggs, though? It takes literally like twice as long compared to store-bought eggs that have been in your fridge for a couple of weeks.

There's a membrane that keeps the shell attached to the yolk after its boiled that needs time to release. try cooking them a few days ahead of time

Haven't tried that, but I heard that older eggs have that sort of separated (or that it becomes looser, or something) as compared to fresh eggs; all I know is older eggs own the crap out of fresher eggs when it comes to peeling them. I'll have to get some fresh eggs to try your suggestion with, it'd sure make life easier because EVERYONE loves my deviled eggs, and I feel obliged to make them for anything I need to bring food to because of it. Thanks for the tip.

DTex, that does help some, (rapid cool-down) but there's still a considerable difference between old eggs and fresh ones no matter what I try. There are a ton of "tips" on the internet to make boiled eggs easier to peel, and not a single one makes more than a small (possibly small-to-middling) difference that I've tried. Except to use old eggs.

RolandDeschain wrote:DTex, that does help some, (rapid cool-down) but there's still a considerable difference between old eggs and fresh ones no matter what I try. There are a ton of "tips" on the internet to make boiled eggs easier to peel, and not a single one makes more than a small (possibly small-to-middling) difference that I've tried. Except to use old eggs.

Yep, that's the number one tip. They way purchase those eggs a couple of weeks early and keep them in the fridge. Wife has a peeler that hooks on the faucet that is a bit better but no really fresh egg peels easily.

In our early years of Easter and young kids eggs from the store weren't so fresh. Now a days eggs at the store are at the oldest a week, more likely 3-4 days. There are places around here, Moses Lake, and many others I'm sure that have trucks rolling for either seperate grocery stores or distribution centers daily.

I met a guy years ago at Sea-Tac in the middle of the night. I was waiting for a connecting flight from Vegas to Spokane and he got off a plane from London, stepped up to the clerk with a gold visa card, (very unusual in those days) and asked if he could get on the same flight.

Turned out he was from Northwest Egg in Deer Park and had been in Saudi Arabia that morning where they had sent a shipload of eggs. Had been in the air all day and wanted to get home that night. Told me eggs sealed with mineral oil and refridgerated would last 6 months pretty easy when I questioned how they got eggs that far.

That was about 20 years ago. Northwest Egg has become Northwest Food and they have moved out by Lind, Wa. The property of theirs and a mink farm right by the old Deer Park Drag Strip just recently sold for development.

The ones we get in the stores aren't sealed with mineral oil. Only those for long term shipment.

When we make eggs we use the start with cold water, bring to a rolling boil. Turn off the burner but leave the pan on the hot burner covered for 20 minutes.

Then as Tex says run them under cold water. What I do is run cold water and then let them stand about 5-10 minutes, pour that water off and run cold water again. That helps a bit with the peeling but again the fresher the eggs the harder to peel. Which is a pisser if you're making one of my favorites deviled eggs.